I.m 72 now and did my first car repair at 16 when I blew the head gasket on my family’s 47 Fraser. I still do easy things like brake jobs, radiators etc but there are some things that I will have my mechanic do if the weather is bad or time is short. Anything I can’t get done by supper can wait until the next day.
I still do my own oil changes because my mechanic is way to busy to do any repairs without an appointment and leaving the car. Anyone else I have had do it has messed it up somehow. Loose drain plug, overtightened drain plug, loose oil filter, too much oil (and thought it was ok because they didn’t charge me for the extra oil). Two places in a row chewed up the outside of the drain plug so badly I had to replace it.
The last place tried to get me to replace an air filter with only 5000 miles on it and left the air cleaner disassembled and when I got home I called the shop and was offered the next oil change free.
Ididn’t take them up on it.
Asemaster, I used to work for 2 different dealers who allowed a little to go on; outside of regular hours of course.
One dealer used to allow us mechanics free use of the shop and supplies every other week; usually on Thursday nights. The service department would close at 5 P.M. and we could bring any of our cars in and whatever we wanted for the evening. Usually by 5:10 we were back from the store across the street with cold beer and generally around 7 P.M. one of the guys would drag out an old 8 MM film projector from his trunk and show what we shall call adult education films on the wall of the shop.
That did make it a bit difficult to concentrate on doing a car alignment or lead to forgetting that the acetylene torch you were holding is actually lit…
I am in my mid 60’s and I do a lot of my own work, but since I can afford having it done, I do let others do those things I just don’t feel like. I might add that with today’s cars there are a lot less to do.
I’m 58 now and have been a DYI for 28 years.
In my youth, I worked for 16 years doing repairs in various garages, new car dealerships, & heavy equipment. I started out going through a 2-year full time auto mechanics course, which enabled me to really excel wherever I worked.
In my mid 20s, I decided to go back to school and get an engineering degree (and continued working as a mechanic to help pay for it).
While I still love auto mechanics, my passion and eagerness to jump in and fix things is waning. I still manage to do 99% of all my repairs, though my body has definitely slowed down.
I do love teaching others how things work wrt to auto mechanics. I’m a merit badge counselor for the Auto Mechanics merit badge. It’s great when 2-3 older scouts (17-yr olds) ask me to do the merit badge with them and teach them auto mechanics. It often becomes their favorite merit badge.
As you get older it’s not so much not being able to physically able to do the work…but also the time and desire to do the work. Luckily we haven’t had any major problems that require too much wrenching. PM is about all I do much of anymore. My oldest son is away to college so I’m not helping to fix his friends cars anymore.
I started working on farm machinery and cars at age 14 and kept doing some form of DIY ever since. A friend is a master mechanic (worked on Rolls Royce and Jags), and after he retired as servcie manager, he kept doing his own maintenance. He currently is 74 and has cancer. Up until last year he still did oil changes and other routine work. He did not do these to save money.
I belive most DIYers stop doing maintenance and repairs when they either get rich enough to hand it to others, or get arthritis or some other ailment that prevents them from doing it. Some simply give up because of the complexity of toay’s cars. Others downsize and move into condos or apartments and no longer have the space or opportuninity.
I had a dentist friend who owned several Jags and bought all the tools to maintain them himself since there was no local mechanic capable. He had to be careful with this hands.
I’m only 45 so I can’t say a thing about the age at which I might stop.
Right now I’d like to stop. I’d like to be making the kind of money where I could only drive a newer car that was still under warranty. I might then still do some light maintenance, but would dump any real repair issues on a dealer. But I drive old cars that other people think are used up so that I don’t have car payments, and have low insurance payments, etc. Between the costs of paying someone else to do my work AND the fact that no one else will pay as much attention to my cars as I do AND the fact that its hard to find people you can trust - whether competence or honesty or both - I keep doing things myself. If I don’t do it, I overpay for substandard service.
However, if I was in a position to have newer cars where real problems always belonged to the manufacturer via warranty, I would still wrench. But I would do it for fun rather than out of necessity. One of these days - probably after I manage to get my 2 teenagers all the way past college - I am going to find the oldest 4WD pickup I can and restore it. I won’t restore it for shows. I’d restore it to use it as a 4WD pickup truck. After that it would be something else. Might be another truck. Another car. A vintage motorcycle. Whatever seemed like fun…
I am 50 now. I have been around cars since I was born. My Dad own a full service gas station. I started taking apart my bike. I must have been about 5 then. I help at the gas station till Dad sold it when I was 11. My first was car a 61 Ford. My Dad showed me how to rebuild the starter. I was 13 then. Since then I have done every thing you can do to a car. Now at 50 I sill work on my own cars,trucks and tractors when I have time. A good friend as a lift that I can use anytime I want. I sill restore a car or truck when I have time. My job limits what I have time to do.
But I would do it for fun rather than out of necessity.
I think this makes all the difference. I am mostly speaking from a hobby point of view. Major stuff, it’s nice to just be able to get it towed, and write a check a few days later. But, it’s nice to also have some understanding of what’s being done. I’ll never go back to being blindly clueless, as I was for 20 years.
I think there is also an “interest” curve several of you have mentioned. After 10 years, it must get redundant, and you just stick to some basics, when you’re bored, and want to do some PM. There are lots of other hobbies out there. I am new again, so I think I will be interested for at least a few years.
I think the internet is helping make this less of a “black art”, and maybe the recession will spur people to learn about their cars again, even if it’s just PM.
Mid fifties and all the free time in the world but the back recovery period from crawling underneath or reaching deep into an engine bay keeps going up. Also the climate where I live limits outdoor wrenching to seven months at best regardless of one’s state of limber. I used to get a great deal of satisfaction cleaning and setting plugs and doing carburetor and ignition timing adjustments on slant and straight six engines where there was enough room to climb right in with the motor. I can definitely see where the crappy economy is affecting people’s relationship with their cars too. Just try and find something in reasonable shape pre fuel injection, pre ABS, pre computer that would be easier (and cheaper) for the novice DIYer to own. All the good one’s are gone in my area since the government mandated bi-annual emissions testing for everything newer than 1988.
London, you don’t need an old “simple” car to DIY. Newer cars are more reliable, and you just need to learn how to swap out parts, be it mechanical or electronic. Changing a sensor is easier than fixing a mechanical part. So, I think “complex cars” is not a valid reason why people don’t DIY. I think it’s a time and knowledge issue.
As long as we are bringing other interests into the conversation, when the weather is bad or days too short in the winter to comfortably work on cars (I usually work outside), my other hobby is building PCs, mostly gaming PCs. Compared to fixing cars and trucks it’s a very clean hobby and you can work indoors and at night. As I get older I might be doing more of that but on the other hand you can only build so many computers before they start piling up.
I have so much invested in my tools I won’t be quitting DIY auto repair anytime soon though. There was a time when my Snap-on dealer stopped at my house once a week (in a regular residential area). He even gave me a 10% discount off of list which led to buying even more tools. Eventually he moved to another part of the state and I had to find another dealer. By then I also had a Mac tool dealer I met on a regular basis. Now that I’m older these guys have retired but I don’t need as much so I buy mostly online from time to time. Buying tools is almost as much fun as working on the vehicles themselves.
I’m 63 and have been working on my own and my family’s vehicles since I was 17. Early on, my “fix’n” ended up costing me more to get the repair done again, but that’s how I learned. A 1961 Fiat Cabriolet became the major source of my education. I plan on continuing as long as I can.
I also do a little plumbing, electrical, carpentry and paint as needed around the house. Right now I am painting my daughters house. We replaced the garage door trim (the 2x8s on each side of the door) as teh contractors boards took a bad twist. I primed and painted all 6 sides, unlike the originals that were only painted on the face and outside edge, no primer.
I started doing minor things like oil changes on tractors & model A Fords when I was 16. I did progress through the years to doing points, condensers, spark plugs, fuel pumps, mufflers, brakes, ball joints, water pumps, timing chains & gears, wheel bearings, heater cores, master cylinders, & the list goes on & on. I never tackled an automatic trans. The only complete motor job I done was rebuild an older engine ,the flat type volkswagon motor. All new bearing shells, new connecting rod & a valve job. I am now 82 years and still do all my own servicing on my 06 honda CRV, All fluids Trans. etc . air filters, cabin filters.,rotate tires. I hope to continue being able to do this for several more years unless some health issue creeps up on me. I just can,t imagine having to trust some garage to do all my work. I have always liked to be the only one to get under my hood. Sorry for my long winded reply. Honda Bill.
I’m in the same boat as oldtimer 11, I do most of my own home repairs, building and lawn equipment repair too, although last year I did pay a friend that does good work and works cheap to put a new roof on my house and build my new garage. I built my own garage, storage building and roofed my own home at the house in NC so it wasn’t that I couldn’t have done it this time, but time was an issue and I knew with my bad back it might take me a few months. I had just moved from NC to KY and wanted to get the garage finished as quickly as possible so I’d have a place to store my good car and a dry warm place to work if needed. It’s also nice to know if things get too bad in the house with the wife I can go to the garage and do something.
Responding to my previous comment for clarification. If I had my old car I would rebuild everything, New cars are a mystery of smoke and mirrors and $200 parts that cannot be repaired. I swear in my 03 blazer I could not see my spark plugs and had to pull the alternator to replace a thermostat. the Windstar had a code and ended up costing $500 for o rings in the plenum, or something similar. I love working on cars, but due to lack of specialized tools and equipment am limited in what I can fix. Watching ebay for a 71 nova or a 68 cougar, I think it would be a wise investment at this point. ps I am old but willing to do repairs. I got lazy around 50 and decided to let other people do my oil changes.
